El-Rufai: A pint-size awe in Sculptor’s grip?

I almost flattened with mirth reading Oga Suyi Ayodele’s last Tuesday’s piece on troubled wannabe North’s idol, Nasir el-Rufai; starting with the headline that paired him with the legendary Ijesa warlord, Ogedengbe Agbogungboro Adikankanlojuogun (the owner of Oke-Anaye), the Odidi Omo Afodidigun himself, in valourous battlefield heroism and storied swashbuckling conducts in private and public life. I beg to slightly differ, sir. Even by his own telling, the former Kaduna governor is more of Ajantala, the pint-size fiasco of Yoruba folklore, with or without their frame similarity.

From cradle, Ajantala was chaos; chaos was Ajantala. In his autobiography, The Accidental Public Servant, el-Rufai said he had chosen the path of ajakuakata, alajaigboila (Yoruba’s excoriating terms for a fighter who doesn’t know when it is enough) from his formative years, sharing sessions of fight with an older, bigger boy named Sunday who, despite having the upper hand in trading knuckles, had to eventually bolt from him when he (Nasir) kept going for him despite the punishment and pains he was receiving from the top dog. According to the story in pages 11, 12, 13, and 14 of the book, the fight lasted three months! Even when truce was being negotiated by the school headmaster, Nasir still pled that he be allowed to slap Sunday one more time, to the bewilderment of the armistice gathering. The ex-FCT minister has, at different times, been accused of roasting truth for self-conceit fragrance and could have embellished the narrative to appear indomitable, but his years-long political battles with Presidents Yar’Adua and Jonathan and seeming successes will levitate the Sunday story beyond fiction’s level.

Let’s listen to his takeaway from the primary school encounter: “This incident taught me a tactic that I have since found endlessly useful in public life: standing up to bullies is a good way of buying permanent peace. As a child, I knew that I was not very strong. I was not big and I would likely lose, but if I can give the bully a hard enough time, he would not do it again.”

Mindset is a compound word of Mind+Set. It means how you have structured your mind to see things and the world around you. The concept is defined as “a set of beliefs and attitudes that shape how you interpret the world, yourself, and your circumstances, acting as a mental lens that influences your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours in given situations, and largely determining your approach to success, failure, and challenges.”

Psychologist Carol Dweck says mindset has two broad types: fixed and growth. Nasir says his is fixed about battles. Once you have an advantage over him and he fears losing, he confesses to becoming a wrecking ball. That should explain returning from Egypt with back-to-back (wiretapping confession and poison importation allegation) harakiri.

Ajantala, the mythology tempest, was a born-wrecking ball too. He got his renown as a wonder baby or demon pikin by being outrageously unrelenting in doing the extraordinary, which doesn’t ordinarily benefit. And he came prepared; born with a full set of teeth, complete with the ability to speak, sing, and act with supernatural, adult-like intelligence as he dropped from his mother’s belly! Doing evil came easily to him. When he felt like stomping six chickens to their graves, he didn’t stop at number five. He was the all-the-way guy. El-Rufai says that attribute of not doing half measure in fights has served him too, having his baptismal at going for Sunday, his young-age opponent, every day for months.

With the Tinubu administration, it is almost certain the burgeoning fight will also be total. There would be a victor and a vanquished.

The administration is also in war mood. The president appears pissed; he is doing the Commander-in-Chief thing by rallying his battalion to be tossing Nasir around like the rattling Yoruba musical instrument known as sekere. The current Nigeria’s CEO may not have much of alajaigbola (unrelenting fighter) trait, but to his credit, he once sired and reared an Ajantala as Lagos governor. The domesticated Ajantala was groomed into full maturity before being sent on a gubernatorial sojourn in a neighbouring state. But the spirit of Ajantala can’t be caged forever. The genie escaped and exploded. Incidentally, both the once-tamed but now roaming Ajantala and the feral one from Kaduna are now cohabiting under the same shelter. Can the president handle two “esoteric” enemies simultaneously?

In Deuteronomy 32:35, God says: “To me belongeth vengeance and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.” But you can only preach this to someone who hasn’t been as successful as Nasir in being vengeful. He was successful against Sunday in primary school. He has been successful in seeking revenge so far in his public life. With Obasanjo as his backbone, he, interestingly alongside Nuhu Ribadu, now his enemy number one and nemesis, wiped the floor with Atiku Abubakar as vice president, and both he and Nuhu still teamed up to fight Yar’Ardua to his grave. Also on his victim list is Jonathan. So, how do you persuade such a man to change his winning tactic?

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Everywhere you turn, you hear president’s aides and supporters screaming, ‘Tinubu no be Jonathan.’ A friend among his aides broke it down for me last week; in summary, their principal is one you call oju tole oju toko, meaning having a panoramic view of the polity and politics. Jonathan is being roundly mocked for surrounding himself with enemies seeking his political demise in 2015, but acting as his aides and alajoro (confidants). I was privileged to be close enough for a “second” (I wasn’t present at the venue) hand account of a senior party man, doing his national leader (Goodluck) in, ahead of his historic deposition as Nigerian leader. The senior party official from the North-East would sit in on strategic election meetings with the president only to download the contents to yesterday’s opposition, ruling today. In fact, a gubernatorial candidate who chanced on the clandestine trade-off used it to blackmail for his ticket in a South-West state. He went on to win the contest. He warmed his way into Jonathan’s heart and repeatedly tried to warn him his re-election wall had cracked badly and opposition lizards were all over. But Jonathan would seem destined for that “ugly” history which, to his credit, he has made a beauty of.

The Yoruba race in submitting to the sovereignty of God and the weakness of man will say, “ki Olorun ma mu wa” (may we not lose God’s backing) to something that looks predictably settled. It is the window in human affairs that speaks to the scripture about God ruling in the affairs of men (Daniel 4:17).

As things stand today, el-Rufai looks cooked, to the joy of many, including those yet to forgive him for the wide-ranging demolition in Abuja as FCT minister. He should deserve no pity because he walked into it, like a man waking up seeking suicide. But even if he is going to be consumed, he doesn’t have a history of crashing alone. Whatever he is doing now has an appearance of a kamikaze, like Samson, the conquered strongman, who pleaded with God for one more strike to end it all, alongside his traducers. God obliged him.

Whatever is ongoing between the Tinubu administration and el-Rufai is definitely not about the people and their welfare, but it is going to definitely affect the people and their welfare. You ask what concerns garri’s price with the former governor booking an express flight to Kuje? Because it’s palpably a fight to the finish for both sides, everything is likely to be thrown into it, including further sabotage of national security (already compromised with the tactical admission through silence and filed charges by the Nigerian government), and economy, to further embarrass the administration, just like in the dying days of the Jonathan administration. Conversely, the people may also benefit as secrets are bound to fly and explode like Christmas banger, further opening the public’s eyes to the huge crime scene governance is around here. Such dirty laundry may help with future ballot choices.

There is something they say about the leprous and milk. While it mostly connotes negativity, there are times a whole leper colony is needed to upturn sour, sordid milk, especially if they are vessels in the hand of God who can confound the wise with a foolish thing (man, deed, or saying). I will advise the jubilant crowd to take heed.